Anne Marie Conlon

“I’m not looking to go viral,” says Sharon Obasi of her use of LinkedIn. “I’m looking just to be authentic, make connections and see how other people are approaching similar topics.” Obasi, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, started using the global professional social-networking site more in the past few years as she took on extra administrative responsibilities in her department.

For the past 20 years, Elaine Howard Ecklund has studied scientists’ attitudes towards religion. What she’s found, through more than 40,000 surveys and nearly 2,500 confidential interviews, is that there are more religious scientists than many people would expect. In one study, at least 30% of respondents declared a religious affiliation (E. H. Ecklund et al.

Eleven years ago, James Carey swapped life as a postdoctoral researcher in molecular and cellular biology to become a science teacher. He settled into his current role at a small secondary school in Norwell, Massachusetts, in 2013. Some friends, he says, still wonder why he spent so long studying, only to take up a job that doesn’t require that level of education. But for Carey, this was the right path.